Obama taps lawyer from Tulia drug case

By HOMER MARQUEZ hmarquez@hearstnp.com

Published 10:31 am, Monday, October 20, 2014

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Obama taps lawyer from Tulia drug case

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A civil rights attorney whose first case involved the 1999 Tulia drug arrest scandal has been appointed principal deputy assistant attorney general and acting assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

On Friday, Vanita Gupta was named to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Unit in President Barack Obama’s Cabinet.

Gupta was formerly deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She succeeds Molly Moran, who became principal deputy associate to the attorney general.

Gupta took over the position Monday, becoming the first South Asian American ever to head the Civil Rights Unit.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that Gupta, “has spent her entire career working to ensure that our nation lives up to its promise of equal justice for all. Even as she has done trailblazing work as a civil rights lawyer, Vanita is also known as a unifier and consensus builder.”

Born in the Philadelphia area, Gupta began her career as a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and has taught civil rights litigation and advocacy clinics at New York University School of Law since 2008.

Her first case for the NAACP was spearheading the efforts to release 35 defendants in Tulia in a 1999 drug arrest scandal.

The case gained notoriety following a drug sting that rounded up 46 people, 40 of whom were African-Americans. The remaining detainees were whites who had ties to the African-American community.

Nearly one-third of the community’s African-American males were arrested. All charges were based on information from the undercover officer Tom Coleman, an informant who made his living traveling though rural Texas offering to work undercover cheaply for short periods of time.

Coleman claimed that he had made more than 100 drug buys in Tulia, but never recorded any of the sales.

During the roundup, no large sums of money, illegal drugs, drug paraphernalia or illegal weapons were found. Also, drugs Coleman claimed to have bought from the accused did not have fingerprints on the baggies.

Gupta helped to win the case, which released 35 defendants in Tulia whose drug convictions and lengthy sentences were discredited.

All defendants were eventually pardoned in 2003 by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and Gupta helped to negotiate a $6 million settlement for those arrested.

In 2005, Coleman was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 10 years’ probation and a $7,500 fine.